I spent the last week with administrators, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders from Bismarck Schools in North Dakota. I’ve been working with these educators during the last two years as they focus on their mission and vision. Mission: All students will have the academic, social, and personal skills to be career, college, and community ready. […]

Learning Companion is the phrase my Turkish colleague, Kayhan Karli, uses to describe peer coaching. Kayhan is the Director General of ÖĞRETMEN AKADEMİSİ VAKFI, a foundation that has now provided training to over 70,000 Turkish teachers who historically had received very limited professional development. Kayhan shared that he uses the metaphor of ” Life is […]

While at the recent Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) conference in Dubai, I attended a workshop session concerning change agency leadership presented by Pat Bassett, the president of the National Association of Independent Schools. At one point the participants were discussing the conversations that leaders have or avoid, and Dr Brent […]

I have often discussed with school administrators, staff developers, and instructional coaches the need to explore teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning in order to bring about a change in instructional practices. In earlier blogs I have connected to JoEllen Killion’s writing about HEAVY coaching where she stresses the importance of causing teachers to examine […]

I am currently attending the Learning Forward (NSDC) conference in Atlanta. I am presenting a session titled Verbal Skills for Heavy Coaching. In an earlier blog, I discussed the definitions of light and heavy coaching as presented by Joellen Killion, Coaching Heavy and Coaching Light in Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives edited by Jim Knight. Joellen […]